Thursday was technically Thanksgiving Day, but since we’re not observing it until Saturday it was a normal workday for us. However, I was looking forward to this day quite a bit as we were scheduled to go dive tending with Rob Robbins, the USAP Dive Coordinator.
We were originally scheduled to go at 1pm, so I started the morning by finishing up the helo scheduling application I had been working on. However, Rob called and asked if we could go at 9:30 instead. We eagerly acknowledged that we could go whenever he wanted, and arrived at the dive locker right on time in full ECW gear.
There were 10 of us in our party, and we took two vehicles to get to the dive spot. We rode in a Pisten Bully along with Rob, the other two divers, and another dive tender. The second vehicle was a Mattrack-equipped truck with the other two members of the science group and another dive tender. The science group we were riding with consisted of two divers, Tracy and Dan, and two assistants, Lindsay and Leon. They are part of Adam Marsh’s project and are studying sea urchins. We rode with Tracy in the back of the Pisten Bully and she educated us on all kinds of interesting scientific stuff.
Basically, these urchins take six months to reach adolescence here in the Antarctic, yet they take just six weeks everywhere else in the world. Their project is studying why this development cycle is so much slower here. We asked her about a million questions about this and diving in the Antarctic, and she was visibly quite excited about what she was doing and was more than happy to field our barrage of questions. This is her first season on the Ice, and we were embarking on her 23rd dive. Scott asked what was most impressive about diving in the Antarctic, and she mentioned that there’s a huge amount of life under the ice and that everything is so much larger here. There are little critters that are of the same family as head lice that are usually quite tiny, but here in the Antarctic they are the size of your fist. We saw one in the aquarium; they’re like something out of a bad horror movie. She also mentioned that sea spiders are everywhere in the world, but they’re usually about the size of a quarter. Here, they’re larger than dinner plates.
As I’ve mentioned previously, not just anyone can dive in the Antarctic. In order to qualify you must have at least 50 dives under your belt, and at least 15 of those must have been dry suit dives. Once you complete the minimum requirements you must be recommended by your institution’s Dive Safety Officer, Rob Robbins (the USAP dive coordinator), and the NSF Dive Officer. Tracy said diving here is like nothing else; that it’s easily the most beautiful diving she’s ever done and she’d recommend ice diving to anyone.
To dive in the Antarctic you must wear a dry suit, and we asked a ton of questions about how those work. She explained them to us, and once the divers actually suited up it made a lot of sense. When outfitted in a dry suit, the divers stay completely warm and dry, with their face being the only part of their body that gets wet. She said that your lips and exposed facial portions go numb within 15 seconds and you don’t feel the cold. She joked that every time she surfaces they have her recite tongue twisters because her mouth is completely numb and she can’t talk very well.
The divers each wear a jumpsuit made of a Thinsulate fleece liner and nylon outer. Their feet are covered with heavy wool socks and fleece booties. Over top of all this is their dry suit, which looks a lot like a wet suit only much heavier and it’s made of a non-porous rubber so that it’s water-tight. At the wrists and neck are tight latex seals that provide a waterproof barrier once sealed against the skin. On their hands go a pair of liner fleece gloves followed by a glove made out of the same waterproof material as the dry suit. The glove has a piece of latex that goes around the large cuff on their wrist and makes another waterproof seal. On their head they wear a couple layers of latex hoods that are ultra-tight, forming waterproof seals around their eyes and lips. Their dry suit then has another hood that helps form a waterproof barrier with the latex. Lastly, they put on their fins and masks, tanks and weights, and they’re ready to dive.
We drove out onto the ice about 15 miles. The Pisten Bully is a cool ride, though probably the bounciest vehicle we’ve been on since arriving in Antarctica a month ago. It’s a tracked vehicle that looks like a short van with tank treads. The thing is capable of going over just about anything, and once we left the groomed road it felt like we were driving a tank over sand dunes in the desert. Looking across the ice it appears flat and smooth, but in reality there are places with several feet of snow that drift into large waves as high as 4-5 feet. The Pisten Bully just drives right up these drifts and down the other side, tossing the passengers in the back around like ice cubes in a blender.
The dive plan for the day was to go to an established hole, grab the dive hut, and tow it over to a new site, where we’d be drilling a brand new hole. There was a crew waiting for us in a big Caterpillar tractor, and they had already grabbed the old hut. We made our way to Little Razorback Island, not too far from Cape Evans, and found a nice spot right near the island itself. Tracy explained that they like to dive as close to shore as possible because the urchins will usually be on the bottom, and the sea gets really deep really fast. By diving close to shore they’re able to find the urchins on the steep mountainous slopes of the island extending down into the ocean.
All around the island were huge, beautiful pressure ridges that result from large ice floes opposing each other until they both give, reaching up out of the water in an immensely powerful display of natural destruction. Little Razorback Island is right next to Big Razorback Island, which is home to a Weddell seal camp, and therefore there were seals lounging all over the place.
Once we found a good spot for the dive hole, the Caterpillar towed over a ReedDrill, which I first thought was a crane when I saw it initially. It’s actually a huge drill that is used for drilling ice holes, and its bit is about three feet wide with some seriously powerful teeth that cut into the ice. The ice here was about 9-10 feet thick, and the drill took just a few minutes to get through it. It’s quite a process, as the drill goes down a few feet, pulls the shavings up, and continues until it hits the water. There are two people right next to the hole with shovels while this happens. They dig out two trenches in the middle of the pile of ice shavings. This is because once the drill reaches water the entire area floods instantly. I was standing just a few feet away from the hole when the drill reached water, and immediately 28-degree water was covering the ground, halfway up my shins. Luckily my ECW gear is waterproof, and I was extremely glad I had decided to wear my waterproof bunny boots.
Once the hole reaches the water the drill does another pass or two just to make sure it got it all, and then it’s pulled back. The Caterpillar releases the towed drill and then pushes away the ice shavings that are surrounding the hole. Finally, the dive hut itself is towed over top of the hole. Once it is in place, the Caterpillar pushes big mounds of snow all around the hut to prevent it from sailing away in the never-ending wind. I’ve mentioned the wind many times, and it’s ultra powerful out here on the sea ice. At McMurdo we’re protected slightly by the hills behind the station, but on the open ice the wind is constantly blowing anywhere from 20-40 mph. This particular section of ice didn’t have much snow on it, and there were several times that the wind just pushed me right along the ice for a few feet while I was standing still.
Once the dive hut was in place and the snow was piled around it we went inside. There’s a trap door in the floor that is removed and right underneath is the ice hole we had just drilled. Rob lit the propane heater in the hut to give us a little warmth, and that was greatly appreciated after the past 30 minutes of getting blown around the ice. The divers started to suit up, using the technique described above, and soon they were ready to go. They said they’d be down for 30-40 minutes, and then each took a turn dropping into the 28-degree waters of McMurdo Sound. Once the hole was dug the water came right up to the surface of the ice, so even though the hole itself was nine feet deep they hit water right at ice level. After submerging the nine feet to the bottom of the ice they started their dive and the hunt for sea urchins.
Once they were down we decided to brave the wind again and check out some of the seals that were lounging around the island. When I say “island” I immediately think of something lush and tropical like Gilligan’s, but this was nothing more than a big jagged rock sticking out of the ice. There is no shore to it, and even if there was, the pressure ridges circle the entire thing so there would be no safe way to approach the land. Therefore, we wandered around the outskirts of the pressure ridges, being sure to step over all of the many tidal cracks that are in the area, and got some great up-close views of quite a few Weddell seals. The first one we encountered was a juvenile, sound asleep on the frozen ice. I got a bunch of pictures of that guy, then continued on to what looked like a giant sleeping adult. It turned out that on the other side of the adult was a newborn pup sleeping with its huge mother. The mom must have weighed at least 900 pounds, it was enormous. They were also both sleeping, but after a few minutes the mother woke up. She raised her head and looked at us, as if to say “Hi there, this is my baby. If you try to take him you will die.” There’s a rule here in the Antarctic that says if you’re close enough to the wildlife that they react to your presence, you’re too close. This didn’t really count, as all she did was look at us quizzically. Had she started to move, we would have had to back up. We were probably 15 yards away, crouched down taking some great up-close pics of mother and child.
I checked my watch and saw that the divers should be done in about 10 minutes so I headed back to the hut. The two non-diving researchers were the only ones left inside, and we chatted for about 10 minutes before the bubbles appeared, announcing the presence of the divers. They have to do a safety stop at the bottom of the ice for about 10 minutes to let the pressure in their bodies neutralize, and then a few minutes later they popped up out of the hole, one at a time. I helped grab their tanks and weights so that they could climb back up out of the hole, which is much easier said than done, but they’re pros at it and did a pretty good job scaling the ice to climb out.
The divers had a successful dive, with a lot of urchins collected, and after chatting about the dive for a while they asked if there were any plungers in attendance. That’s short for polar plunge, an Antarctic tradition involving stripping naked and jumping in the ice hole, into the 28-degree water. My motto for this entire trip has been to take advantage of every opportunity I’m given, because who knows if I’ll be back here again, and I’m one of the very fortunate few to ever get the shot in the first place. Scott had had the opportunity to do the plunge when he visited Palmer Station in October, but the water there is a balmy 30-degrees. He had passed up his chance and had regretted it ever since, so the two of us decided to go ahead and plunge now that we had the chance. Josh, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with it, so he was one of the cameramen that captured the event on film for us.
Since there were four ladies in attendance that we didn’t know, we both decided it would be ok to plunge in our boxers rather than going full Commando. It’s not like my boxers would provide much warmth, anyhow. I went first, stripping down to my undies and asked the group to give me a countdown. 3-2-1, and in I went. Twenty-eight degree salt water is the coldest water in the world – any colder and it’s ice. In fact, we had to skim some solid ice pieces off the top of the hole that had formed in the interim before we could actually do the plunge. It was cold, really really really really cold. Colder than sleeping in a snow trench, even. However, your adrenaline is running so high that you don’t really notice it until you’re pulled out and standing there barefoot, dripping wet, in your underwear, in a dive hut, on the frozen waters of McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. Unfortunately we didn’t bring any towels, having not planned on going swimming, so I was forced to dry off with my fleece jacket. Fleece, as you probably know, is designed to wick away water rather than absorb it, so it really just pushed the water around my body more than dry me off. Scott by now had gotten stripped down and followed through by jumping in as well. He half climbed, half was pulled out, and we high-fived, celebrating what is sure to be an experience we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.
A few more pictures were snapped of the two of us standing there in our underwear, sopping wet in Antarctica, and then we started getting dressed. Once everyone was dressed and ready we started passing gear back out to the vehicles, then headed back to town. We continued our discussion about Antarctic marine biology with Tracy, and before we knew it we were back home. By now it was about 2:30pm, so I changed clothes and headed back up to work.
After a few hours of normal work stuff we had dinner, went home and watched another movie, then I read some more and fell asleep by 9:30. The polar plunge, while not technically any sort of exercise, seemed to wipe me out. Maybe it was the surge of adrenaline or energy exerted while shivering, or maybe I was just plain tired. I went to bed reminiscing about the fun day we had had, grateful on this Thanksgiving Day for every opportunity I’ve had on this trip, but even more grateful for what I’ll be returning to back home next week.
If you’re interested, there are several new pictures of the event in the photo album.
